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[Registry]

As part of the SCHEMAS project UKOLN are building a demonstrator of a metadata registry. Related work in the form of implementing an RDF metadata schema registry is also being undertaken as part of the project.

We intend this registry to investigate functionality which would enable disclosure of authoritative usage of metadata at a variety of levels

  • Definition of elements
  • Element usage
  • Allowed schemes

This is 'work in progress' and we welcome comment and discussion. We are making this work available as we hope that our efforts will inform activity taking place elsewhere. Please note that this registry is not designed for the purpose of managing a single namespace, but is intended to provide information across a range of metadata schema. In this way it differs from work taking place within the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, although we believe it is relevant to questions of data modelling in this context. In time we would expect a variety of registries to evolve. For example each namespace, such as the Dublin Core (DC), might be registered authoratatively by a registry owned by their own maintenance agency, with 'implementation level' registries linking into such registries as appropriate.

Why we need metadata registries?

New patterns for managing metadata are emerging in relation to the various process of metadata creation, maintenance of the metadata repository, inter-working with other services. Humans and software are involved in these processes and need to be locate information about existing metadata schema.

Within the EC funded SCHEMAS project we are considering the role of metadata registries for the disclosure of information about the structure and semantics of metadata element sets. The need to find out how metadata is used is shared by

  • humans who want to create metadata according to defined standards, for those who want to discover whether appropriate metadata element sets already exist for their purpose, for those who wish to align their metadata sets with those that exist for other purposes.
  • Software which wants to manipulate metadata and needs to know its structure and semantics, metadata creation tools which need to validate and present helpful user interface, conversion tools that need reference to mapping tables.

Metadata describes a resource in order to allow operations on the resource. How do we describe that resource in order to facilitate operation? We choose a metadata schema that defines most closely the semantics we need. Several new and emerging m/d schema now exist, each designed for different purposes, whether for differing domains or for differing functional requirements:

  • Managing learning resources e.g.IMS
  • Rights management e.g. Indecs
  • Resource discovery e.g. Dublin Core
  • Administrative metadata
  • Multimedia metadata e.g. MPEG7
  • Digital preservation metadata e.g. OAIS

What are the requirements for a metadata registry?

Some of the purposes of a registry would be:

  • Authoritative definition of schema
  • Change control
  • Evolution of metadata language
  • Declared relationships between different metadata schema?
  • Best practice
  • Promoting existing schema to avoid duplicated effort

Maintained by: UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN)
Last updated: 22 November 2001